The Founder Institute is the world's premier pre-seed startup accelerator.

Too many aspiring entrepreneurs never start, and too many pre-seed businesses fail, because they lack expert feedback and proper focus during the earliest stages. In the Founder Institute, you can build a company alongside a critical support network of local startup experts that are invested in your success, and through a structured and challenging business-building process that has helped our alumni raise over $800M.

Leaders of the world’s fastest-growing startups have used the Founder Institute to raise funding, get into seed-accelerators, generate traction, recruit a team, build a product, transition from employee to entrepreneur, and more. Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 180 cities and 65 countries, the Founder Institute’s mission is to Globalize Silicon Valley and empower talented and motivated entrepreneurs to build companies that will create one million new jobs.

The Founder Institute was founded in 2009 by Adeo Ressi and Jonathan Greechan. It is operated out of Palo Alto, California.